Pins & Progress
I just got back from the doctor’s.
Another fucking trip to Albuquerque to deal with the aftermath of someone else’s stupid decision. This time it was for my left foot — the one with the three pins holding my metatarsals in place. The little toes. The ones you never think about until they’re being held together by stainless steel.
We showed up early, because we’re Americans and that’s what polite people do. Didn’t matter.
Bureaucracy was doing what bureaucracy does best: moving at the speed of molasses in January. The check-in line was out the fucking door. Just checking in took 45 minutes, which technically made me late — but who cares? The doctor was running a full hour behind.
So we waited.
Eventually they called my name, and I was wheeled into a smaller room to do the exact same thing: wait. The doctor finally came in, glanced at my foot, and said, “I think I need x-rays.”
Of course you do.
Off I went. New room. New wait. New nurse. Same fucking story.
They wheeled me back to the same exam room, where I resumed my assigned waiting position until the doctor returned and casually said, “We’re going to remove the pins today.”
“Oh?” I said. And then, because I’m not stupid: “Does it hurt?”
“No,” he said, “it just feels like pulling.”
Right. Sure. Okay, doc.
Then the pulling began.
The first pin didn’t hurt — just felt alien, like something was being unthreaded from the inside.
The second one? That one fucking hurt. It came out like someone was tugging on a nail in a floorboard, and it bled like a stuck pig.
The third was weird but not painful.
So I’ll give him this: he wasn’t completely lying.
A tech came in, cleaned everything, bandaged it up, slid a boot on my foot, and that was that. Discharged. Sent home.
And here’s the kicker: I still can’t put weight on it until mid-January. That’s a long-ass time to sit still. And it threatens to push my return-to-work date out even further.
Fuck.
Look — I know. I know I have to keep weight off the foot so it heals properly. I’m not trying to sabotage myself. I’ll follow orders. I’ll do the wait. I’ll do the time.
But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking suck.
Because the truth is, I don’t feel like I can really heal until I’m in my own house again. My own bed. My own stuff. My own rhythm. I love Brittney, and I’m grateful beyond words for everything she’s done for me — opening her home, her life, her time — but I’m still living on someone else’s schedule, in someone else’s space, dependent on someone else for everything from food to moving around.
It grinds on you. Even when you’re grateful.
I need to be home. I need to organize my space. I need to rebuild muscle and stamina. I need to feel like I’m steering my own goddamn ship again.
But this?
This is another delay. Another detour on the way back to normal. Another postponement of riding, of working, of living like myself.
And yet… it is progress. Pain-in-the-ass progress, but progress.
And for some reason, my brain dragged up an old memory from the UCMJ — the Uniform Code of Military Justice — the little legal handbook that was always posted on the shitter door on the boat. In the section on rape, there’s this line: “Penetration, however slight, is sufficient.”
That’s what today felt like. “Sufficient progress.” However slight. However shitty. However much it makes you grit your teeth.
Still progress.
Don’t know why that parallel came to mind — but it did.
Maybe because healing feels like that sometimes: violated by the process,
grateful for the outcome, and just trying to fucking endure it.
